Hong Kong officials on Monday announced the strictest social estrangement measures the city has noticed to combat a disruptive outbreak of coronavirus cases in the city.
Final regulations restrict the duration of public meetings to two other people and make it mandatory to wear an outdoor mask, including exercise. Meals in places to eat will also be prohibited. Previous restrictions closed gyms, bars and many public places; Make the mask mandatory inside and dinner restricted at the place to eat before 6 p.m.
The government also announced that China will help build an emergency hospital as the number of cases increases. Health officials showed Monday’s 145 new instances, the sixth new record in a week.
“The pandemic scenario in the city remains harsh, showing that cases over the next week continue to grow rapidly,” Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung said at a press conference. “We have many instances that cannot be discovered and it is difficult for the hidden transmission chain in a short period of time.”
Hong Kong has avoided the strict blockades observed in the United States, Europe and mainland China, although the government imposed various social estrangement measures since January when the first cases of COVID-19 were reported. The most flexible restrictions were due in part to Hong Kongers’ proactivity with the virus: the mask has been almost universal for months and hand sanitizer was extended even before the epidemic. The public reaction was largely due to memories of the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, which killed about three hundred others in the city.
Only a few transmitted instances had been shown for several weeks before the number began to accumulate about 3 weeks ago. Many social estrangement measures had been cancelled (painters had returned to paintings and young people had returned to school) before the government resumed strict restrictions this month.
Officials have not yet followed the origin of many new cases, but citizens have asked the government to fill the gaps that allowed quarantine exemptions for some entering the city. The government announced on July 26 that it would tighten passenger controls and quarantine regulations this week, adding stricter measures for aircraft crews and ships visiting the city.
Ben Cowling, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong, says strict new regulations are the result of more cases than in the past in the city. “These are stricter than the measures that were used in March for transmission, however, the number of cases we’ve been seeing lately is higher,” he says.
The semi-autonomous Chinese territory, until a few weeks ago, had used borders and tracking and tracking to keep the instances in gratitude for the successive waves of COVID-19. Despite its close shipping links to Wuhan, where the virus is believed to originate, and its higher population density, Hong Kong largely controlled saving it the initial epidemic of crossing the border from the mainland in January and February. A wave of moments, brought by the home of Hong Kongers from the United States and Europe in March and April, was defeated with mandatory quarantines for travelers. An additional 2,800 people have been shown to bring the virus to the city of 7.5 million, and another 20 people have died.
The city is not alone in the region in the fight against the resurgence of coronavirus outbreaks. The Vietnamese port city of Danang imposed social estrangement measures on Monday after the government discovered the first case of network transmission in the country over a hundred days over the weekend, according to the VnExpress news website. Official COVID-19 instances in Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world, exceeded one hundred thousand, and officials admitted that they did not know when the epidemic would peak. India reported a peak of just about 50,000 new instances on Monday, bringing the national total to 1.43 million. And the epidemic in the Australian state of Victoria continued without ceasing on Monday, with a new record of 532 instances.